


An unfortunate liability in an otherwise perfectly messed up order

by inkfeathers



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, I just needed them to interact in some way damn it, Immediately after chapter 107, M/M, Post the battle of liberio, Post-Time Skip, Prison, Warning for violence between the two characters, but it's Eren and Jean we are talking about
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2018-07-24
Packaged: 2019-06-15 12:26:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15412881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkfeathers/pseuds/inkfeathers
Summary: Jean Kirschtein has never been afraid of Eren Jaeger.This person here though… He is not sure who this is.





	An unfortunate liability in an otherwise perfectly messed up order

**Author's Note:**

> Russian translation by laylahlounchlord here: https://ficbook.net/readfic/7271066

The rumor spreads like wildfire.

 

Someone had overheard a conversation between Hanji and some other soldier, and now everyone knows about Eren’s behavior with his superior. He has heard many versions of it, and he is pretty sure he knows which ones are over exaggerated lies, but what bothers him are the ones he is not sure are too far-fetched from the truth. Jean had known, for as long as he had known him, that Eren Jaeger had more than one screw loose in that block-head of his. He is pretty sure anyone who had heard Eren talk for more than three seconds could acknowledge this fact without him having to point it out. He knows who Eren is. Or he _had_ known. He had thought he knew who the person they all relied on was, what he was capable of. He had never claimed to understand him, much less of knowing what was on his head on any given day, but he thought, he _thought_ , he knew his limits.

 

He is not sure anymore, and that bothers him more than he is prepared to say.

 

Jean is a Squad Leader now. His comrades, he has learned, respect him. Trust his decisions. Jean was careless enough to leave a door open in the middle of a battlefield for a little assassin girl to come in, and Sasha had paid the price. So he doesn’t think he has earned that trust, most probably never will. But he has it. Even if it was just by absurdly surviving an impossible battle four years ago, he has it, and he uses it when he needs it. And he uses it right now to get to Eren’s cell.

 

There is nobody else down there, the oppressive silence being the only presence following him and guiding him towards the end of the long corridor. It is enough to forewarn Eren that somebody else is there. He can’t see him but somehow he knows he is awake. Alert. Like he always is.

 

He is sitting on the bed looking at the opposite wall. Shirtless. His eyes so far away he almost looks bored, but Jean knows that’s not it. This is a look he has grown familiar with. It means whatever Eren is thinking is so dire and depressing that he retreats deep inside himself to deal with it alone. Because Eren is a suicidal bastard and a masochist and he just spirals out of control inside his own head, until it eventually comes out in the form of… Well, in the form of why Jean is here in the first place, why Eren is in this cell in the first place.

 

“Eren,” he calls, since the bastard hasn’t even acknowledged his presence.

 

Eren doesn’t move. Jean’s hand curls into a fist.

 

“ _Eren,”_ he doesn’t shout. But it’s a near thing.

 

Finally he looks at him. His irises trail a slow path to the corner of his eyes to give him the most uninterested, unconcerned look Eren Jaeger has ever granted him.

 

“What do you want, Jean?” he asks, voice flat and impassive.

 

 _To understand,_ Jean thinks, although he is not sure that's something he can do. But at the very least, he needs to hear him explain himself. He takes a step forward.

 

“Hanji came here to talk to you, I heard you refused to say anything to them. People are saying you even threatened them. Is that true?” Jean doesn't dance around his words. There is no other way of communicating with Eren. And Jean, for one, has always been direct.

 

“Yeah,” Eren confirms. Admittedly, it takes Jean aback. “But I wasn’t threatening _them_. I was threatening all of you.”

 

Silence.

 

Jean Kirschtein has never been afraid of Eren Jaeger.

 

This person here though… He is not sure who this is.

 

Jean forgets Hanji. That's not what he really came here for. That's not what has has his head at it's limit for days and nights now. That's not what has been making him want to crawl out of his skin in disgust. 

 

“Eren, why did so many people have to die? Why did you force us into that damned plan?” Jean demands. He needs to hear him. Eren needs to.

 

Talk.

 

To his face.

 

Damn it. 

 

Jean...can’t accept that someone like Eren would just go on the loose for no reason. Eren is crazy, but he is the noble kind of crazy. The would take a bullet to the heart for someone else kind of crazy. But what happened in Liberio didn’t fit with his understanding of Eren. It fit with the crazy bastard, for sure. But not with the part of him that would sooner chop off his own head than have other people die because of him.

 

Eren stands up from his bed, his piercing silver eyes cut through him as he comes closer to the bars of the cell. It is difficult for Jean to keep his eyes off his bare chest. Some place at the back of his head is realizing that he hasn’t seen so much of him in a long while, because Eren, in those last months before his escape, was usually kept away from everyone else.

 

He didn’t remember how broad his back had gotten, or how much stronger his arms looked, how different he was from his 15 year old slender self. They are almost the same height now. They look at each other eye to eye.

 

“I think I explained it all well in my letters. Or were you guys too busy finding breeders for Historia to read them properly?”

 

Jean.

 

Wants to hit him.

 

“You don’t get to talk to me like that. Not after everything you’ve done. Not after what you put us thr-”

 

“Why don’t you come closer, Jean?” Eren asks, taking a step towards him, he doesn’t look angry. He looks calm. Collected. But Jean can see it, he can see it in the way his arms flex, in the posture of his legs and the tension of his shoulders. Eren is burning inside, he is ready for a fight. “You are too far away. Are you scared?”

 

Jean Kirschtein has _never_ been afraid of Eren Jaeger.

 

He is not about to start now.

 

How dare he. How dare he fault them for everything that has gone on, when _he_ was the one who left. He is the one who betrayed him. Them. He had put his trust in him and this is how Eren--

 

Sasha…

 

Jean is so angry he can’t think straight. If only this idiot made any sense. He used to make sense, back when Jean hated him. His animosity came from an understanding of what exactly it was that made Eren and him so different. He used to obsess about it all the time. His head an incessant repeat of Eren this, Eren that. He knew exactly what to say to provoke him. Exactly what tone to use to get into his skin, and Eren had always responded. He feels like he has to revise everything he knew about Eren to this moment, and that’s a thought that makes him ache in a way that’s not anger, but Jean can’t think about what it might be at the moment.

 

Being angry is easier. He knows anger.

 

“I’m not scared of you, Eren,” he says firmly, taking a step forward, because it’s true. Jean is by no means a brave person, he lives with fear every single day, but he has never been scared of Eren. Not even when he saw him come out of a Titan’s neck for the first time. Not even right now, he realizes.

 

“You should be,” Eren challenges and grabs at the bars, his eyes widen in anger. “Did you just come here to ask me to repeat what I’ve been saying for three years?! _Why is everyone pretending this is the first time they have heard this shit_?! _DID THEY EVER COME UP WITH A BETTER PLAN?!_ ”

 

“That’s not the fucking _point!!!”_ he yells back at him. _“_ The point is that you _shouldn’t have gone on your own!!!_ You're _not the one who makes those decisions_ _!_ And you _dragged the Survey Corps with you._ ”

 

“I wasn’t going to stand still while you guys did nothing. I wasn’t going to just wait for their false promises.”

 

“Eren,” Jean grabs hard at the bars, his hands just on top of Eren’s equally rigid ones. “I’m sure you see what you have done. I’m sure you haven’t gone completely out of your mind. But I don’t understand this so you are going to have to explain it to me.”

 

Eren grabs him by the lapels of his coat and nearly slams his head on the bars of the cell.

 

“ _What good does it do to explain if none of you want to hear it?!”_

 

Jean grabs him by the throat, not hard enough to choke but enough to hold him in place.

 

“ _I’m_ listening,” he says through gritted teeth.

 

Eren’s fierce look doesn’t waver one bit.

 

“Tell me the other option, Jean,” Eren says all of a sudden, his voice strained from the pressure of Jean’s hand.

 

“What?” he asks, confused.

 

“The other option. What was it? I’m dying to know.”  

 

“There wasn’t another option because you gave us no choi-”

 

“Before I left! What options did we have?!” he yells.

 

“Hanji was deciding on it,” he huffs. “We are all as trapped as you, Eren.”

 

“And yet I’m the one in this cell,” he tightens his hold on Jean. “And you guys keep treating this situation like a joke.”

 

“ _A JOKE?!_ ” Jean roars and grabs him harder. “Do you think this is a fucking joke to _me?!!_ I watched as Sasha was shot and killed in front of me and couldn’t do shit about it. Seven other soldiers died on that battle. Casualties that could have been avoided if we had had more time to prepare, if we hadn’t gone to that battle with one blind eye and desperate to get out alive. _Do you think I don’t take their lives seriously?!!”_  

 

Eren grunts, “That’s not what I-”

 

“ _Why_ couldn’t you wait?! _Why_ are you so stubborn? The entire world is coming for us now and we are not prepared. Do you want to drag everyone into their deaths? _Or were you so bloodthirsty you couldn’t fucking wait for the whole world to turn into a shitfest?!_ ”

 

Jean realizes he is gripping him too hard because the hold on his own clothes loses. He lets go, then. Not because he thinks he crossed a line, but because he realizes Eren is _letting_ him. He isn’t putting any resistance, and it throws him off guard. More so when a strange but somewhat familiar thrill courses through his body when he sees him cough, taking his hands to his neck. He has the sudden urge to touch him more, grab him more. He wants to get into his cell and shake him hard. Punch him. Throw him. Kick him. Kiss him. Bite him. _Anything._ He is furious with himself. He is not 15 anymore. Eren Jaeger _shouldn't make him lose his mind like this anymore._ But he does, and he wants to make him pay for it. For being Eren fucking Jaeger, human mess premier. And himself for being dragged like a moth to a flame towards it.

 

 

He looks down at the floor in defeat, and wonders what the fuck he thought he was going to gain from this. What the fuck he came here to do.

 

“Jean,” Eren calls him. Jean looks up after moment.

 

And is immediately taken aback.

 

Eren is looking… He is looking at him in a way Eren Jaeger does not look at him. His face remains severe, lips pressed tight and unyielding. But his eyes… Jean is brought back to years ago, when he could draw every emotion from those eyes, when those eyes were so fucking open and sincere, that it didn’t take long for Jean to learn what every little expression meant. He can see pain. Can see sadness. Can see understanding and something that is not regret, but comes closer to despair.

 

When he speaks, it is with such a sense of dread that it chills Jean to the bone. 

 

“There is just _no_ time,” he says, almost quietly, and those eyes bore into his soul.

 

When Jean goes back to his quarters, he keeps replaying the conversation over and over in his head. Keeps thinking of Eren. Of how much he had changed, and how much he was still the same. He doesn’t know what to think. Doesn’t know what’s right. He hadn’t been able to say anything, at the end. They had stared at each other for a while without speaking, reaching some kind of strange understanding before Jean eventually left, although he didn’t know what exactly they were conceding on. He left because it hurt to look at him for much longer. There are things that are simply too much, even for people like them.

 

He doesn’t know… if recognizing Eren in those eyes again brings him any relief or fills him with more dread. He doesn’t know if there was something else he should have said. He doesn’t know if Eren is right and everyone else has it all wrong. He just doesn’t know, Goddamnit. He is going insane.

 

Hanji comes with the news at the crack of down, just as he is getting ready for the day after a restless night.

 

They announce it with the same sense of inevitability that he feels when he hears it. Eren broke out from his cell. They haven’t been able to find him. He stole an uniform, gear and a horse on his way. They all think he is going to meet with his brother, even though he wasn’t supposed to know where he was.

 

Jean (along several other soldiers) sets off to chase Eren Jaeger, a second time.

 

As he rides across their newly reclaimed land, he gets the feeling it isn’t going to be the last.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to post this before next chapter fucks it up and makes it irrelevant. Which will inevitably happen. I just needed my boys to interact in some way please. Comments are much much appreciated.
> 
> Come scream with me about eren and jean in my tumblr, everythingeren or inkonice !


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